56:834:501
Foundations of Policy Analysis (3)
The logic of action, decision-making, and belief; epistemological issues underlying scientific and policy research; causality, probability, statistics, and public policy; the role of problem definition, description, theory, model-building, explanation, and prediction in policy research and decision-making. Reviews major substantive theories of public choice and public policymaking and critically examines them from a logical and theoretical perspective.
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56:834:503
Law and Public Policy (3)
The place of law in the formulation, articulation, and enforcement of public policy; legal sources, such as constitutions, statutes, cases, administrative rulings, and agency practices; federal, state, and local sources and materials examined for policy inconsistencies, contradictions, and overlap; the effectiveness of fees, taxes, licenses, labeling, injunctions, and other legal sanctions.
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56:834:505
Organizational Behavior (3)
Examines organizational behavior of individuals and groups/teams and the organizational context in which that behavior takes place. Organizational theories and behavioral theories and approaches are discussed, including seminal historical works and more current treatments.
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56:834:515
Introduction to Public Budgeting and Finance (3)
Combines readings with the development of a budget for a hypothetical city to demonstrate budget formats, the politics of budgeting, and methods of projecting expenditures and revenues. Administration and criteria for selecting taxes.
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56:834:525
Public and Nonprofit Management (3)
This course examines contemporary management approaches, techniques, and skills for managing various kinds of public organizations. Decision-making, administrative leadership, planning, implementation, evaluation, and ethics are key topics.
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56:834:535
Research Methods (3)
Examines research and methodology as a practical skill for public administrators. Topics include research design, descriptive and differential statistics, regression, and qualitative research. Students will learn and use a computer statistical package.
Prerequisites: 56:834:501, 503, 505, 515, 525.
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56:834:536
Public Management Information Systems (3)
Management-oriented computer methods including personal productivity systems and office automation; database management; and the analysis, supervision, and coordination of the management information systems department within the larger organizational culture.
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56:834:539
Race and Public Administration (3)
This seminar examines race and public administration in the United States. To understand the complexity of these multifaceted phenomena, coursework involves exploration, deep critique, and broad analysis of new and emerging theories on the edge of the study and practice of race and public administration.
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56:834:541,542
Internship I,II (3,3)
Direct experience with public agencies; individual internships, under faculty supervision, in policymaking agencies.
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56:834:546
Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Education (3)
Given the many changes in public education and the "choice" movement in recent years, this course provides students with an overview of the different opportunities for new ventures in public education. Students will explore ideas for innovation in education and learn new competencies in critical areas such as fundraising, development, leadership, and best practices. Students will be exposed to important business practices, such as writing a business plan, structuring a capital development plan, and engaging in creative financing for large-scale projects. The course features guest speakers who have been successful in launching entrepreneurial ventures--in and out of schools. Emphasis will be placed on areas of supervision of teachers and innovation in instructional practice.
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56:834:547
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement (3)
Highlights the key elements that have proven successful in the delivery of high-quality teaching and learning. Students will explore and discuss a variety of strategies for initiating and sustaining improvements in teaching and learning--including content-focused professional development, content and performance standards, market models, strategic planning, parental engagement, and accountability systems. The course will expose students to current research and practice related to school improvement and organizational culture-building, as well as to the key competencies necessary to sustain improvement in schools and school systems. Special focus on the areas of curriculum and instruction, specifically as they relate to curriculum development. Course requirements include observation and analysis of classroom practice, development of case studies based on actual practice, and a final project addressing schoolwide improvement.
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56:834:549
Curriculum Leadership (3)
This course focuses on a historical overview of the major curriculum approaches; introduces students to key theories about leadership of organizational change as they apply to schools; and introduces students to key principles in standards-driven reform.
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56:834:553
Financial Management of Public Programs (3)
Examines budgetary processes, municipal bonds, cash management, and intergovernmental fiscal relations as they apply to financial management of public programs. Topics include cost-benefit, cost-revenue, and cost-effectiveness analyses, as well as contemporary issues such as privatization and liability insurance.
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56:834:556
International Negotiations (3)
Examines both the substance and the process of international negotiations--principally negotiations between or among governments. In the initial phase of the course, students will study the analysis of negotiations. They will identify issues, interests, and positions of the parties; analyze the environment and structure of negotiations and the trade-offs among issues; the concepts of principled negotiations; and the use of power in bilateral and multilateral negotiations.
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56:834:557
Human Resource Management (3)
Examines the relationship between employers, employees, and their labor relations organizations in government and the nonprofit sector. Focuses on the roles of leadership and direction of employees and the impact of collective negotiations on critical issues of public policy and civil service organizations.
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56:834:558
Executive Leadership and Communication Skills (3)
Strengths and limitations of various leadership theories. Awareness of personal learning, leadership, influence, and communication styles. Develops leadership skills through interpersonal exercises and through course projects involving current managerial and political issues. Communication skills involving writing, speaking, meetings, media relations, and strategic planning emphasized.
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56:834:559
Ethics in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors (3)
Study of the federal, state, and local laws governing the conduct of public officials and of ethical standards beyond the boundaries of law. Relates professional standards of public administration to ethical problems in government.
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56:834:570
Labor-Management Relations in the Private and Public Sectors (3)
Analysis of the structure and development of labor-management relationships in the United States and abroad, focusing on both private industry and governmental organizations. Explores history and the surrounding law while focusing on the negotiation and administration of collective bargaining agreements, related micro- and macroeconomic problems, and issues that accompany the growth of the nonunion sector in both private and public sectors.
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56:834:600
Education Law and Finance (3)
Focuses on the legal and school finance issues concerning K-12 education and schools. Provides aspiring school leaders with the knowledge and skills that are necessary to adequately address legal and finance issues in schools.
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56:834:601
Writing for Public Policy and Administration (3)
The writing course will familiarize students with common public policy writing expectations. It will also expound upon the traditional academic writing experience through the public policy issue brief.
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56:834:603
History and Practice of Community Development (3)
Overview designed to acquaint students with the history, theory, and practices of community development. Topics include economic development, education, housing, public policy, urban redevelopment, community organizing, capacity building, and community engagement.
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56:834:604
Alternative Development Strategies for Distressed Cities (3)
A critical examination of alternative community and economic development strategies for distressed cities. Special attention will be paid to the following: the conflict between older strategies that emerged from deindustrialization and more democratic forms of community development; the problem of scale; market-conforming "pragmatic" approaches to solving problems of poverty versus efforts aimed at a broader political transformation in values; and cooperation versus competition in structuring incentives.
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56:834:606
Poverty Alleviation Strategies (3)
Evaluation of
various strategies for poverty alleviation at the community level in
the United States and developing countries. Assesses the
fundamental causes of poverty and the tools the poor possess for
survival, as well as a number of income-generating strategies
ranging from encouraging entrepreneurship (microfinance, skills training) to
participation in the global economy through manufacturing work.
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56:834:608
Geographic Information Systems in the Public Sector (3)
A introductory geographic information systems (GIS) course, with an emphasis on application; training primarily uses open-source GIS software. Students will be able to produce maps and conduct basic research using geographical data in any discipline that uses such data, e.g., public policy and administration, sociology, criminology, and public health/epidemiology.
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56:834:609
Politics of Community Development (3)
This course will help students integrate a critical perspective on the theoretical and empirical literature on community
development; as a field of practice, community development is critiqued from a power perspective. The course uses historical and contemporary case studies of community conflict and collective struggles for a "right to the city" to analyze the political drivers of local economic disinvestment and development.
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56:834:610
Regional Economic Development (3)
Weekly seminar designed to expose students to the academic literature on urban and regional economic development policy and politics in the United States. The goal of the class is to help students understand the complexity of economic development, including the many problems governments face in pursuing economic growth, the diversity of actors involved, variation in approaches to development and the theoretical underpinnings of those approaches, consequences for vulnerable populations, and the hope that well-planned economic development offers communities.
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56:834:612
Local Knowledge: City Policy (3)
Critically analyzes questions of local participation in the policy process through the use of case studies and primary sources representing the local perspective.
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56:834:613
Immigration and Community Development (3)
Investigates the unique needs of immigrant communities and
focuses on the community development efforts that have been developed to
address those needs in the United States. We will work from the understanding
that immigration politics and policy greatly influence both immigrants'
needs and the resources that are made available to meet those needs. As
such, we will treat politics and policy as an integral part of the
community development story and spend significant portions of the class
studying these topics.
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56:834:615
Housing Policy (3)
Explores housing policy in the United States. Provides an overview of the complexities of federal housing policy in the United States, with special attention to how it has been implemented in urban areas, to situate existing housing issues and problems in a historical context.
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56:834:616
International Economic Development (3)
This course will investigate what is meant by development. How is it attained? Who is responsible to make sure it happens? What should the international donor community do? What shouldn't it do? We will look at competing ideas about how to understand, measure, and address international poverty.
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56:834:617
Comparative Public Policy (3)
How does public policy differ across countries, and why does it diverge? This course focuses on variation in national policy patterns, with a view to understanding how and why nations differ in their social and public policies and what countries can learn from one another. We will examine contemporary approaches to policy formation and issues across a wide range of countries, and in different fields, such as health, education, poverty alleviation, and the environment; and analyze the comparative policy process, including policy design, evaluation, and reform.
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56:834:618
Education Policy and Analysis (3)
This course introduces graduate public administration students to both long-term and current K-12 educational policy debates with special attention to the achievement gap, school choice policies, teacher evaluation and recruitment, school accountability policies, state takeovers, and education finance reforms. Specifically, students will learn the theoretical frameworks used to motivate past and current education reforms, as well as the empirical research on the effectiveness and unintended consequences of those education reforms.
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56:834:619
Practicum in Sustainable Community Development (3)
The practicum is an applied research field experience course at the community development level in the Delaware Valley region or beyond. Students may work with a community-based client, for example, a nonprofit organization or municipal government agency, under the supervision of a faculty member to develop and implement a concrete research project that can be completed in one semester.
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56:834:620
Inequality and Segregation (3)
This course examines the dimensions of inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, residential segregation by race and class, and the concentration of poverty. The focus is primarily on the United States, but comparisons with other industrialized nations will also be discussed. The course will address questions of definition and measurement, historical and current trends, causes and consequences, and policy responses. Students will be expected to work with official data to calculate measures of poverty, inequality, and segregation; to understand the main theoretical and empirical debates; and to understand the role of public policy in addressing or exacerbating these problems.
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56:834:621
Educational Leadership (3)
Guides students in formulating, researching, and writing a capstone research paper. Integrates the skills and concepts from the core
courses as students use quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze a
selected policy or administrative problem.
Students must have completed 21 M.P.A. credits. Prerequisites: 56:834:501, 515, 525, 535, 536, 600.
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56:834:670
International Conflict and Conflict Resolution (3)
In this course, students analyze emerging trends and patterns in
global conflict, and consider the prospects for peace in an evolving
world order. Explores the causes and prevention of war, ethnic conflict, and terrorism, and issues of security, identity, and equity to better understand the critical dimensions of conflict.
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56:834:675
Research Workshop (3)
Guides students in formulating, researching, and writing a capstone research paper. Integrates the skills and concepts from the core courses as students use quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze a selected policy or administrative problem.
Students must have completed 21 M.P.A. credits. Prerequisites: 56:834:501, 503, 515, 525, 535, 557.
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56:834:800
Matriculation Continued (0)
Continuous registration may be accomplished by enrolling for at least 3 and preferably 6 credits in standard course offerings, including research courses, or by enrolling in this course for 0 credits. Students actively engaged in study toward their degree who are using university facilities and faculty time are expected to enroll for the appropriate credits.
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Graduate School-Camden 
